Lo’s face fell. “That’s not possible. I would have heard something.” She paused, thinking, and then said, almost to herself, “But Yoni did say after they left we were never to speak of them again.”
“It is possible. It was all over the news right after it happened. They were found dead in a cave near here. The police say it was a murder-suicide. But I don’t believe that Ethan would ever murder anybody. And that’s why I’m here.” I reached out and took Lo’s hand.
Lo said nothing. I couldn’t read the look on her face. “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Ethan, and in my research I discovered that his mom was a follower of Yoni’s years ago. Her name was Rosemary. Safflower’s name was Rosemary before she met Yoni, wasn’t it?”
I saw a flare of shock cross Lo’s face. She didn’t respond, so I continued. “And that Aries—Yoni—whatever you called him then, was Ethan’s dad.”
Lo said, “But . . .” She trailed off. I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. I pushed forward, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t finish what I had to say. “She married another man—the guy who raised Ethan—right after she left the commune. Did you know she charged Yoni with rape? I don’t know how that’s related to Ethan’s death, but it just has to be.”
I could almost see Lo going back in time in her head, trying to rebuild her life’s chronology when the story she had told herself for so long had shattered, realizing they didn’t leave Mendocino so they could spread the good word about their new spiritual practices. They left the West Coast entirely because Yoni was running from the law.
“I didn’t know any of that,” Lo said. “Ethan was such a gentle soul.”
“How could you know about it? Yoni’s been keeping you in the dark about the entire world for forty years.” I was starting to get worked up now, and my voice rose.
“Keep it down,” Lo said tersely. She sat in silence for several moments before slowly removing her hand from mine. She closed her eyes, and I could hear her taking deep, soothing breaths, like she was physically processing what I had just said.
At last she opened her eyes and looked at me. “I think our session for today is over. I need to work through what has just happened, and I can’t do that with you here watching me.”
“But I really think we should talk this through,” I pleaded, grabbing her hand again and holding it to my chest. “I need to know more about Ethan’s last days here. It’s so important for me to be able to put the pieces together so I can get the real story. So I can move on with my life!”
Lo yanked her hand away. Her voice became a hiss. “Please. Leave. Now.”
I was desperate to tell her more, to make sure she believed me, but I obeyed her. As I walked out of the room, I turned back to look at her. Her eyes were closed again, and she was shaking her head back and forth and chanting quietly.
I thought about leaving then. Just marching up to the front desk and asking for a ride back to Albuquerque. I wouldn’t even ask for a refund—I’d just hightail it back to civilization as fast as I could. But I knew that if I left now, I would never find out what happened to Ethan. My money and time would be lost. I had no proof that Lo would use what I said for malicious purposes. I had to believe that the connection we had was real.
I decided the only course of action was to continue at the retreat as I had been. I went to breakfast with Willow. I attended my usual afternoon yoga classes. There were no more Yoni appearances—I saw him only at occasional mealtimes like everyone else. I went to dinner with Willow. After dinner, I listened to Willow, Bodhi, and Maria gossip.
The day after my run-in with Lo, I arrived at her workshop at the appointed time. I thought we could work through things together, but she wasn’t there. When she didn’t show up I went over to Coral at the front desk to see where she was.
“Lo didn’t show up for our morning workshop,” I said. “Is she okay?”
“Let me check on that for you,” Coral said, plinking something into her keyboard. “Hmm, I have no record of a cancellation from Lo this morning. I’ll look into it and get back to you.”
I went back to my room and tried to occupy myself with showering and paging through Yoni’s “books” until lunchtime. I looked for Lo at mealtimes, but she wasn’t there. I thought about asking Veena or Dew if they had seen her, but I didn’t want to call any additional attention to myself, especially not from the ordained.
The next day at breakfast, I was assigned to a new morning class. The new class was called Brush Meditation, which involved using paintbrushes as a “contemplative tool.” That meant sitting in front of a blank piece of paper and making random brushstrokes, like elephants or gorillas do when their keepers are making them “paint.”
I tried to sleep at night, without much success. I was so afraid that Lo would turn me in to Yoni. After the bad press he got with Ethan’s and Amaya’s deaths, he wouldn’t be brazen enough to harm me, too, would he? If he tried to get me alone and attack me, how would I get out of it? If I tried blaming the guru for anything, no one at the Homestead would believe me. I started fantasizing about escaping into the desert brush. I had no food or water. My cell phone was dead. I had money, but what good would that do me in this forbidding landscape? I had a disastrous sense of direction. I could picture myself wandering through the brush, totally lost, and ultimately slumping over from dehydration, dying out there like Ethan and Amaya did. I obsessed over these visions until the sun rose and the shades disappeared into the ceiling.
The days went by like this. I wandered through my schedule, not fully paying attention to anything because I was so exhausted. I barely spoke, but no one seemed to notice. Willow loved hearing the sound of her own voice, so she was sated with random mm-hmms that I exhaled in the middle of her monologues.
I started seeing Lo at meals again, but she would avoid eye contact. Her eyes would dart down to her plate the second I looked over at her. Every time she looked away from me, it was like a stab in the gut. I thought our connection had been something profound—something that stood apart, unsullied, from whatever else was going on at the Homestead. But I was wrong. It was like getting rejected by my mother all over again.
Except for her refusal to look at me, from outward appearances, nothing seemed to be amiss with Lo. She seemed to be plugging along as she ever did, gabbing with Veena and Dew. I wasn’t particularly worried that she’d inform on me; she seemed to want to pretend that our talk had never happened at all.
I was at the end of my third week at the Homestead when my stupor was interrupted by the juiciest gossip Willow and her pals had ever chewed over. We were at lunch one day, passing around a bowl of coconut chia pudding, which tasted like coconuts mixed with dirt. I was choking it down when Maria started flapping her hands in excitement. “Oh oh oh! I almost forgot to tell you the most exciting thing!”
Willow looked up from her pudding. “What?” she said, sort of harshly.
Maria ignored Willow’s tone. “I heard from Songbird that someone is going to be ordained soon.” She smiled proudly, like a dog that had just killed a backyard gopher and dropped it at his owner’s feet.
Willow put down her spoon. “Wow! Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. Songbird wouldn’t say where she heard it. But I know she’s had at least one special session with Janus, and we all know Janus has Yoni’s ear.”
“I don’t know,” Bodhi said. “I’ve been here six months—longer than almost any of the other non-ordained residents. And I haven’t seen anyone ordained in that time. I’m not sure anyone has really stood out.” The wrinkles between his eyebrows deepened and he started stress-eating his pudding.
“Well, I think a lot of people have been doing really important soul and body work, and that it’s high time Yoni noticed,” Willow said. “Don’t you think, Dana?”
Everyone turned to me for a response. I didn’t care about who got ordained, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of their bitchfest. But I had to say something, s
o I said, “Mm-hmm,” in what I hoped was a noncommittal way.
“See? Dana has also observed that some people are making a lot of progress.” Willow sat back, satisfied.
“I think you’re a lock for getting ordained,” Maria said to Willow.
Bodhi blanched. “I actually think that Tarot has made the most progress,” he said quickly. “His dedication to his spiritual awakening is leaps and bounds beyond anyone else’s. Did you see the way he came up with that mantra on the spot the other day during our Co-creation class?”
Willow looked like she was going to stab Bodhi with her spoon. “I haven’t been impressed with Tarot at all,” she said. “In fact—”
I couldn’t listen to this any longer. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back,” I said. No one responded; they weren’t paying any attention to me.
I went into the cool, tiled restroom and washed my face. I looked in the mirror, which I didn’t do much anymore. Who was I trying to impress? My dirty-blond hair had brightened a little in the New Mexico sun, but the ends were ragged without my expensive shampoo to smooth them. I had huge bags under my eyes from getting so little sleep. But otherwise I looked surprisingly good: my skin was clearer than it had ever been (probably from all that hippie food) and my eyes seemed brighter. I searched my expression to see if this experience had changed me in some fundamental way. If I looked older, or warier, or sadder. But I looked as much like myself as I ever had.
I dried my face with a hemp washcloth and walked back to my table. I was almost at my seat when I saw Janus standing there, talking to Willow. He had a concerned expression on his face, which lifted as soon as he saw me. “Oh, there you are,” he said, grabbing my upper arm. “We need you. Come with me.”
Willow looked up at me, confused and maybe a little jealous. I tried not to look terrified, but it took everything in me not to start crying. I scanned the room. People were starting to look at me, and I wanted to find Lo in the crowd. But she wasn’t there. An empty space sat across from Dew and Veena. My stomach dropped. I said nothing and followed Janus out of the room.
Janus led me down a series of corridors that at first looked like everything else here: terra-cotta walls and deity pictures. But then we passed through a glass door I’d never seen before. He needed a punch code to open it, and it made a great sucking sound when he pulled at it, like the following corridor was hermetically sealed. After that, the décor changed. The walls were a rich purple and hung with the kinds of samurai swords I’d seen displayed during the sex ritual. The floor was laid with pristine blond wood. I could tell that the floors were heated because the boards beneath me felt almost the same as my body temperature.
We had been walking for several minutes when we reached a room without windows. The walls were covered with Indian throws and twinkled with little mirrors, reflecting the candles lit in the four corners of the room. Big pillows lined the floor, and next to each pillow was an empty trough. It looked like a hookah lounge for horses.
Janus led me to one of these pillows. He sat down on another one. We waited in silence for several beats, and I started to tremble. He noticed and patted my arm reassuringly. Then, through a door that had been covered by Indian fabric, Yoni emerged.
He bowed and sat down on a pillow facing us. “We’ve been aware of your actions here,” Yoni said, looking right into my eyes.
I wanted to defend myself but said nothing. What could I say? I looked over at Janus. But, confusingly, Janus did not look angry.
“You have made great progress, Dana,” Yoni said. “I’ve seen the work you have done. You do not gossip like the other magpies. Gossip hinders our self-work, because it is other-focused. You quietly go about your studies and seek to get rid of all the negative energy in your life. You’re a true penitent.” His eyes lit up as he spoke. He took out a tiny set of hand cymbals that were tied together with an orange ribbon and clanged them together three times.
One of the nymphets, holding a golden lacquered tray with two mugs on it, appeared in the hidden doorway Yoni had come through. She knelt between Janus and me. Janus took a mug, and I followed suit. I peered inside mine. Whatever was in there looked dark and murky. The nymphet bowed at us, her tray never moving, and left the room again.
“Congratulations, Dana. This is your ordination ceremony. This does not mean that your work here is done. On the contrary. The real work of your journey is just beginning.” Yoni’s eyes sparkled, but his mouth was set in a serious line. I could see the wrinkles in his brow tighten. He nodded at Janus, who drank from his mug. I took a small sip from mine. And instead of fear, I felt pride.
Some part of me knew it was completely fucked. That everything I had experienced over the past few weeks was potentially dangerous mumbo jumbo based on a foundational lie. That the real work I was supposed to be doing wasn’t even going well: I was only half a step closer to finding out what had happened to Ethan than I had been when I arrived at Zuni.
But another part of me knew I had done real work here. The things I told Lo were completely true. For the first time in memory, I didn’t feel angry. I wasn’t cursing fate and the hand I’d been dealt. I wasn’t blaming my mother—or Ethan—for everything that had gone wrong in my life. And I was grateful for that.
Janus took another big gulp from his mug, so I did the same. It was only after this second gulp that I really tasted the brew, which was like baker’s chocolate infused with twigs and snot. The aftertaste lingered in my mouth for a moment and I almost threw up. I wondered if it was poisoned.
But when I looked over at Janus, he continued to take shots of the brew, making faces like he’d just had a jigger of cheap tequila. Aside from those faces, he looked fine. This didn’t seem like some Jonestown scenario with cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. I took a few more little sips of my drink: big enough that I could get the liquid down, small enough to keep me from gagging.
After Janus and I finished our drinks, Yoni said, “Lie down,” and we did. We used the pillows to prop our heads up. “Close your eyes.”
I felt Yoni’s hands gently combing my hair. His nails were surprisingly long, and his touch maternal. After a while, my limbs felt heavy, and my stomach began to roil. Fuck, what if this was a Jonestown scenario? It would be too late. The fear was so intense that it short-circuited my brain; the thoughts kept bumping into one another like a roomful of toddlers learning to walk. My heart beat a fast, syncopated track. The pain got worse and I turned over to my side and curled up in the fetal position.
“You may need to use the troughs for your eruptions,” Yoni said. “Vomiting is a common side effect of the ayahuasca journey you are on.”
I looked over at Janus, who was doubled over his trough, retching his life out. Just watching him caused me to start heaving, and as my lunch came back up the same mantra kept repeating over and over again in my head, erected in big neon letters that flashed on and off: Pride goeth before a fall.
When I was empty I lay down again, and the mantra disappeared. I started to see vibrant colors burst across my brain. Pink and then green, blue and then black. Black black black. I imagined myself groping around in the dark, feeling for some sort of exit, but my hands were slippery. I found a hatch in the ceiling and I opened it. My mother fell out. “I’m in pain, I’m in pain,” she kept wailing. “Can’t you see? I’m in pain.”
I picked her up and comforted her. She was the size of a baby. It was suddenly so clear to me that she was nasty because she was hurting. I felt revolutionary empathy for her, unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I cuddled her until she stopped wailing and fell asleep.
I started groping around in the dark for another entry. I found ornate French doors, and when I opened them I fell into a garden. Birds chirped in my ears, and gargantuan butterflies flapped their huge wings so that I felt a fresh breeze on my face. I wandered through the garden until I found an open field. I sat down and started picking cornflowers, then wove them into a daisy chain and put them on my head. Beth appe
ared next to me. She was wearing a white nightgown, like the ones we wore as children. I wove a daisy chain for her, too. She thanked me. “I’m so proud of you,” she said, before she floated away. I waved good-bye to her as she disappeared into the sky.
I got up and kept walking until I came to a pond. I looked down and saw my reflection, but I also saw Ethan’s face. “Dana,” Ethan said, “you don’t need to worry about me. You’ve done enough for me in the earthly world. You were a good wife. I couldn’t live up to our sacred vows. I’m sorry.” The water in the lake rippled in the butterfly wind, but Ethan’s face remained clear. “My spirit is at rest,” he said. “Please don’t disturb my spirit. I’ve found perfect peace.”
I turned around to see if Ethan was behind me, but there was no one there. I looked back at the water. Ethan’s reflection was gone. In his place were two otters. They floated on their backs while holding hands. I knew that these otters were Ethan and Amaya, and in that moment I released all my jealousy toward them. I was so happy their spirits were at peace that I started to cry.
I saw Janus drifting above me on a cloud. “Do you understand what you are seeing?” he asked, reclining on his white puffy chaise. “Kai and Amaya brought each other to the physical brink. They were worshiping an Aztec goddess of death, the obsidian butterfly. She told them to prove their love to her by spilling their blood on sacred soil. That’s why they fled the Homestead. The butterfly has claimed them. But their spirits are free as the breeze.” With that, he floated off into the distance. He got smaller and smaller and smaller until he was one with the sky.
And then I heard Yoni’s voice in the background. He kept saying my name: Dana, Dana, Dana. Like a chant. Was this only happening in my mind? I felt him putting his hands on my forehead. They were cool to the touch. My face was hot. Yoni started speaking.
“I want to tell you a story about a pair of coyotes, a male and a female. They lived blissfully together in the Mezquital Valley, feasting on the abundant crops and sleeping in the cool highland air with the rest of their pack. The male was the alpha of the group, a natural leader. And the female had the glossiest, healthiest coat of any coyote in the valley.” As Yoni spoke, I saw those coyotes saunter in front of me and lie down together, nuzzled into each other. “One day, those coyotes were blessed with a single pup.” A sweet baby coyote appeared on the scene, walked over to his parents, and snuggled into his mother.
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